Espionage :(

[WhatAMess]

I honestly do not undersand how spy bonuses work in Moo/CTS. Spying disappoits me so much that i probably will not even play EA6. I have use stealthy spy races for the last month and stole nearly nothing, caused nearly no damage to races i spy on. I've even concentrated all my research to discover more bonuses for spying and i still have close to no chance of stealing techs. Anyways Spy is lame and it needs a lot of work.

Can Spy bonuses be cumulative. Because i'm not feeling any changes in gb

[Davor]

While the new spying is unique for a MOO game, I am finding it so disapointing because espionage is usually the most fun for me. Just loved playing Darlocks in MOO1, and then a super spy custom race in MOO2.

Espionage needs a major overhaul in MOO. What to do? I don't have a clue. Combat I can give advice on how to fix with the devs vision, but not with espionage. Turn limits when something gets done is just not fun.

[Waratah]

It's been said before...spying shouldn't be about how many turns it takes to achieve a goal.

It should be about the chance per turn of achieving a goal.

The better your spy tech, the greater your chance per turn of having success.

Darlock's should have a much greater success rate based on higher probability per turn.

The current spying system is way too linear, and quiet frankly very boring.

MOO2 did a good job with spying. At least it was more fun. Sort of like rolling the dice each turn.

Yep, spying needs more work!

[WhatAMess]

Yes it does... it has to take less time to complete a mission, it also needs to be easier to send spies. and yes it should really let us build our own spies and send multiple spies.

[Lemonhead]

Originally posted by Waratah:

It's been said before...spying shouldn't be about how many turns it takes to achieve a goal.

It should be about the chance per turn of achieving a goal.

The better your spy tech, the greater your chance per turn of having success.

Darlock's should have a much greater success rate based on higher probability per turn.

The current spying system is way too linear, and quiet frankly very boring.

MOO2 did a good job with spying. At least it was more fun. Sort of like rolling the dice each turn.

Yep, spying needs more work!

I never went heavy into spying, so I don't know the specifics. Was it actually possible to get spy actions every turn if you had enough spies? Was there no hidden duration mechanics in play?

[AndyMillz]

We are watching!

[Superpescado]

I want to be able to make spying the corner stone of my strategy. This was possible in MOO2 either with the darlocks or custom race. It was entirely possible to steal tech, destroy buildings, sabotage ships, frame opponents and use all of those things to win. Right now spying in MOO CtS spying is just an afterthought.

So in my mind until spying becomes a strategy to win the game I'm not really interested in it.

[WhatAMess]

Nope in Moo2 we could build as much spies as we could ourselves. Multiple spies could be sent for specific missions, that would enhance the chance of success for a mission.

The same went with counter-espionage. In Moo2, espionage was treated at an empire wide scale, spies were just sent to an ennemy empire not planets, we also had a reserve of spies meant for counter-espionage, and all of the same missions as Moo/CTS were accessible.

Spying was way more effiscient that way, since it was almost instant ( the moment you met a new race you could start spying ). I think the bonuses actually meant something in Moo2.

Sadly in Moo/CTS spying takes to much time and when you send spies they can hardly do any damage since the ennemies seem to already be extremely well suited with Counter-Espionage at the beginning of the game.

All of this makes spying litteraly useless.
I hoped that they would change this with EA6 but they seem to have done nothing.

Devs must like CivSpying I personnaly think CivSpying Suc.ks and i never used it because of the boredom linked to civ spying.

They must have a civ developper with them that doesn't ( hey it doesn't matter if the code is more complicated then it was what counts is the result in gameplay, it is way more important ) want to change things.

MASTER OF ORION IS NOT CIVILIZATION IN SPACE NOR IS IT ALPHA CENTAURY i'm sorry to say. Civ is a good game but pls keep civ out of Moo/CTS i mean the reseach branches are civ enough and succesful but espionage needs total reprogramming at this point. I hope spying will change or will be recalibrated to be something usefull not because of the missions it offers but because of the staggering time it takes to actualy complete missions and how so very difficult it is to actually accomplish.

[WhatAMess]

As much as productive races and research and even war races seem to lead to victory, spying should also offer the same oppurtunities. I am fed up i'm going back to standard + food + research +production race builds since its the only damn.ed thing that can offer victory right now.

Moo is a good game but seems absolutly incomplete. Thank you for atleast creating a modern version of Moo. I am done i will play and post nothing until race balance and espionage function as expected. This is Master Of Orion Alright so make it so.

[Davor]

I think what could happen to make us happy but keep the vision of what NGD Studios is doing is bring back the "pool" of spies. By that I mean any spy made goes into the pool and is automatically set for defensive spy game. That will be empire wide. So gives a small bonus for defense.

Then if you find a planet doing things unexpectedly or might think it might get attack by another spy, manaully put a spy to that planet for a big increase of the planet only.

then we can send spies like MOO1?MOO2 against other empires in a macro level and for those who want to micro it like now can do so. This way we keep NGD Studios vision that if we want to specifially tell the spy what to do, we can and for those that don't like the micro can just leave the spies in the pool for macro. Just click on the spy/spies on a macro level to an empire, but you can't tell it what to do. So it randomly finds information or does a sabatoage/steal/whatever randomly then.

Best of both worlds. Keep the vision, but give the peole what they want as well.



Also spies shouldn't be like research. It will take 10 turns for this 10 turns for that. What it should be like is MOO1 how ever they did it, or how I guess it worked like MOO 1 research. So much spy points get put into the spy action and once you hit a number threshold like in MOO research you have a percentage per turn to be successful. After so many tunrs not being successfull it's a failure.

Also the more spies you send, the easier it is, BUT the more likely chance of being caught.

Also let spies gain experiance points so we can customize them to our liking. One spy better at getting information, another stealing another sabotaging or if you are really lucky Maky a James Bond Spy that is good at everything. That would really be rewarding now. :)

[vince904]

I'm currently focused on playing Darloks, & agree with much of what's been said here (for whatever that's worth). For me the problems with espionage break down into two aspects (i) the user interface & (ii) the usefulness of spying.

(i) useful information is too scattered. Some of it is on the star map, some in the victory conditions screen, & some in the diplomacy section. It would be helpful to have all this concentrated in a screen resembling the empire screen, which you could then use to allocate your agents.

(ii) a) Even when successful, espionage just isn't that useful. I never played much Civ V, but in Civ:Be, whose espionage model this also seems to closely resemble, people were able to structure their strategy around stealing science/energy. That just doesn't seem possible with Moo:Cts.

b) espionage just isn't successful enough. I'm playing the Darloks, the best spy race in the business, skew my research towards espionage techs, & by turn 200 all my missions routinely end in failure.

Recommendations:-
1. Redo the interface to make it more user-friendly
2. As Davor suggests, provide a risk/reward consequence for using multiple agents on a mission.
3. Have counter-espionage agents have to commit to missions as well in order to earn a defensive bonus in that area as well.
4. Make it possible for espionage races to be successful enough to be able to build a straegy ariound stealing research/energy so that they actually feel different to conventional races.
5. Enable agents to target specific diplomatic relationships as well as the general rating.
6. Provide diplomatic options to do this too (as the British, admittedly unsuccessfully, tried with Stalin in 1941).

[Davor]

Originally posted by vince904:

(i) useful information is too scattered. Some of it is on the star map, some in the victory conditions screen, & some in the diplomacy section. It would be helpful to have all this concentrated in a screen resembling the empire screen, which you could then use to allocate your agents.

Wow great point there. I didn't even know I should go to victory conditions to see some of the info. No wonder I thought when I get a successfull mission I find it useless because I didn't know where to look to find this information.

I thought it was all on the main map.

[Explicitly Offensive Cuneiform]

There needs to be a set of "military" options for spies. Where they tell you how big the fleets are, where they are headed, how many star bases they are, and other stuff.

There should also be a defector risk as well. You could gain tech if you send your spies into another empire, or they could get tech out of your spies via waterboarding or bribes.

I think the spy system would work better with fleet admirals and planet governors. Give them missions as well, but these missions woudl be colony growth.

Spies should also have a "bounty hunter" mission, where they can destroy pirate bases, and other spies, both inside your empire and outside.

[Imricdaelf120741]

I don't care for spying but these ideas would make it relevant enough to use.

Right now spying is as useless as ever. That being said, I play longish games with wide empires on big maps, so all my spies are set to destabilize relations on every race I can reach. As for anything else, I don't get enough information nor does anything suceed enough to be of use.


Spying functions, but it's lackluster and essentially useless in it's current state. Just because I use it doesn't mean it works well.

[vince904]

Originally posted by Davor:

Originally posted by vince904:

(i) useful information is too scattered. Some of it is on the star map, some in the victory conditions screen, & some in the diplomacy section. It would be helpful to have all this concentrated in a screen resembling the empire screen, which you could then use to allocate your agents.

Wow great point there. I didn't even know I should go to victory conditions to see some of the info. No wonder I thought when I get a successfull mission I find it useless because I didn't know where to look to find this information.

I thought it was all on the main map.

Thanks!

I'd just find it useful to have the info about empire population size, military might, diplomatic relations, who has tech I don't have.... etc. to hand, rather than having to scrape round through various screens to find it all out (only to promptly forget half of it & have to go back & relocate it).

It'd also probably be good if instead of having a spy reinforcement every X turns, you had to consciously decide to build it. That'd mean you actually had a purpose in mind when you built it, rather than suddenly trying to find a use for this thing that has just landed on your doorstep.

[madocs]

Espionage needs more work!
I liked not knowing where your spies were! It made them more spyey in my opinion lol!
Need more randomness to the outcomes perhaps.

Maybe when on a mission, they may have the chance to do something other than the current mission due to chance... get them to ask us whether to do the mission they are on or use the opportunity when they have it.